There May Be More Critical Tesla Model 3 Details To Come

IS THERE MORE TO TESLA’S MODEL 3 THAN MEETS THE EYE?

We know that Tesla designed Model 3 to be capable of full Level 5 autonomy (self-driving), and we know that the company envisions a future autonomous ride-sharing system called the Tesla Network, which will allow owners to rent out their cars when they aren’t using them. And that’s about all we know – Tesla has not revealed any specifics about how the Tesla Network will work, nor any technical details of how Model 3 is designed to be used in a ride-sharing scenario.

A Tesla Motors Club member called Alketi believes that he has pieced together some of these missing puzzle pieces, and in a recent blog post, he presents an interesting picture of the “robo-taxi” of the future – one that Tesla itself isn’t ready to talk about.

Alketi concedes that what he has to say is pretty much speculation, but he backs it up with a bit of physical evidence, as well as a few reasonable assumptions about what will be required to equip a vehicle for use in an autonomous ride-sharing service.

Alketi writes in a sensational tone, savoring the excitement of revealing secrets that Tesla doesn’t want us to know about. What fun! However, if what he surmises is true, it isn’t at all surprising that Musk and company don’t want to talk about it. Why should they? Even in the best-case scenario, it will be a year or more before Tesla whittles down the Model 3 waiting list to a reasonable length, and the autonomy and ride-sharing features in question won’t be available for at least that long. Why get people excited about new features that won’t be delivered for months or years?

Tesla’s new Model 3 can use both its key card and phone app-based unlocking system

Tesla has said that all vehicles built since October 2016 have the hardware necessary for full self-driving capability. However, Alketi points out that full self-driving does not necessarily equate to ride-sharing. He believes that only Model 3 is destined to be part of the Tesla Network, because it has certain ride-sharing-friendly features that the other models lack (also, it arguably makes little sense to use an S or an X as a robo-taxi when the cheaper 3 could do the job just as well).

If you think about it, you’re bound to conclude that a vehicle that can drive off on its own to pick up strangers and take them to their destinations will require certain special hardware features. And after a close (virtual) examination of Model 3, Alketi is convinced that it has these features.

First, consider Model 3’s minimalist interior. The absence of physical controls means that everything in the vehicle is controlled by software. Everything can presumably be configured for the preferences of any individual person, and access to any feature can be granted or prevented remotely.

A look inside the sparse, ultra-modern Model 3 interior

A ride-share customer could theoretically step into any Model 3, anywhere in the world, and it would remember all of his or her preferences – seat height, language, favorite radio stations, etc. And a vehicle owner could restrict access to any vehicle features for security reasons.

Alketi asks: “What are the first two concerns people mention when asked if they’d hypothetically share their car with others in a ride-sharing network?” The two top worries: “What if I leave something valuable in the car?” and “What if someone pukes/destroys my interior?”

Thanks to Model 3’s software controls, access to the glove box, trunk and frunk can be restricted only to the owner, so all three can be used as safes – you don’t even need to remember to lock them. Model 3 also features a camera that monitors the interior cabin. This would seem to be an essential feature for a robo-taxi, to discourage riders from damaging the interior.

Another look inside the Tesla Model 3 – Interior Phone Dock

One more feature is needed to make a robo-taxi practical: a secure way to enter and start the vehicle without a physical key. You guessed it: using the Tesla app, you can lock or unlock Model 3’s doors from anywhere in the world (Models S and X also have this feature).

When reviewers discovered that Tesla has replaced the key fob with an NFC key card, some were disappointed – swiping the key card against the B-pillar seems less convenient than simply having the fob in your pocket. Is this a step backward? Nope – according to the sage Alketi, it’s “a red herring.” The key card is only an alternative form of entry – the usual way to enter Model 3 will be by using a smart phone. Tesla’s mobile app now runs a background service that uses Bluetooth LE to directly connect to the vehicle. With your phone in your pocket, the car will unlock itself, recognize you and configure itself with your preferences, privileges, and restrictions.

So, if all this turns out to be correct, Model 3 is an even more amazing vehicle than anyone has yet realized. It will eventually be self-driving, optimized for ride-sharing, and fully customizable, not only for its owner but for any driver/rider. That leaves only one question: When can we get one? Hurry up, Tesla, hurry up!

*Editor’s Note: EVANNEX, which also sells aftermarket gear for Teslas, has kindly allowed us to share some of its content with our readers. Our thanks go out to EVANNEX, Check out the site here.

53 responses to "There May Be More Critical Tesla Model 3 Details To Come"

Why do the heads of the self driving program at Tesla keep resigning after a few months in the job. As far as I’ve seen Elon Musk has said the model 3 is capable of full autonomy. Given we don’t know yet what the legal restrictions will be on what a vehicle needs to have as in what type or range of sensors a lot of this would seem premature.

I do not think that the government has legal authority to regulate specific sensors. Regulations will be based off continued saftey history.

Basically of the fleet of teslas has a significantly lower crash risk than humans they will be able to maintain autonomous capable status.

If a seat belt or air bag kills somebody there dont ban them from a manufacturers use because in the big picture they save lives. If the lives saved by autonoumous tech is as high as 90% which musk has hit at the government would be sued from wrongful death of anybody killed in an autonoumous capable vehicle with it disabled by the government.

Maybe in 20 years there will be a technical standard when the tech is cheap like an iphone but not right now when you have billions being spent by different players on different techs.

I do believe elon is right to say camera will be all that is reauired in the future… Eyes are all humans have and only teo instead of a dozen.

The Guvmint wanted to require transponders on all cars, and now that initiative is falling into the ash can (by the way it was not a bad idea). They have stopped leading in regulation and are now mainly along for the ride.

You are not going to see regulation for sensor types, but far more likely for different driving types, such as freeway/highway driving vs. local, etc. You will also see “slap rules” from accidents, even if it is human caused. That’s how government works. Its a slug. It reacts to shocks.

“I do believe elon is right to say camera will be all that is reauired in the future… Eyes are all humans have and only teo instead of a dozen.”

It’s not the human eye that is the gold standard. It’s the visual processing cortex of the human brain, the result of billions of years of evolution, which computers and software can’t possibly match; not with today’s state of hardware and software development. Not even close. Humans have amazing visual acuity and image recognition ability; the human ability in that area is better than just about every other animal on Earth, with the exception of raptors (eagles, hawks, and the like).

And anyway, the goal here isn’t for the autonomous car to have an ability to sense the environment (and obstacles in it, both moving and stationary) as good as a human can; the goal is to do better than human. Humans can’t see in the dark, nor see thru fog. Since active sensor systems such as radar and lidar can, there’s no rational reason not to use them. The only barrier there is cost, and with solid-state radar systems, costs should come down over time.

Trying to stick with cameras is both cheaping out and short-term thinking, in an area where human lives are at stake. I admire Tesla for most of what they do, but this is just indefensible.

Tesla has already acknowledged this, and are using radar to back up visual sensors, which are required anyway (or tell me exactly how radar recognizes a stop sign?).

Both radar and lidar have the property that they are absolute ranging, as it they calculate an exact distance to objects. Now I have used a parallax imaging camera (a video camera with two spaced out “eyes” backed up by a special chip to process the parallax). It really is friggin amazing how well it works. But I am just skeptical about it. I don’t believe in %99 solutions.

I can’t tell you why Tesla choose radar vs. lidar. They both have issues with rain attenuation, the worst case of automatic driving. But then I am a lowly programmer. I study physics, and those boys just think I am cute for trying. Oh Well.

Right. Autonomous drive is years off, so it appears Evannex is on-message helping Tesla distract with other “..Critical Model 3 Details”, like key-based seat memory.

There would have been no shame in marketing this 3,800lb, 80KWh (~400+KW capable) battery car as a driving machine, but that’s not how Tesla grades its pitch-men. M3 will still likely outpace its rivals. It has the bones, but then we’d have to admit we’re getting away from autonomy’s rush to save the planet.

That’s why you have their credit card on file, and video evidence to charge them for damages. How often do you think that happens anyways? Just leave your car in the shop to get things cleaned/replaced and summon a car to drive you around while it’s out of commission.

How often does someone puke in the back seat of a taxi? Why don’t you ask a taxi driver! I would guess it’s pretty common, since people who are too drunk to drive will often use a taxi to get home.

Do you think that somehow a ride-sharing service would be immune to the same thing?

“If someone throws up in the back of a cab, it’s no laughing matter to the cabdriver, who now has to take two hours to detail the cab,” said George Lutfallah, a driver who publishes Chicago Dispatcher, a newspaper for cabbies.

Ridesharing shouldnt be thought of as taxi service. Think of it like this.

You, your parents, brothers, sisters, children all have their own cars maybe 10 or more in total but only drive them 20 minutes a day each. With a little bit of schedule management between family memebers one car can replace all of those cars for some families… If you buy a $100,000 tesla and devide the payment 10 ways and lower fuel cost significantly for all cars you are paying much less than 10 super cheap cars. If you get 1 model s and share it with just 5 people you trust the payment eould be under 10g each fully loaded.

Ride sharing is the future. Autonoumous taxis may never exist or may rewuire $100 credit card hold until car is verified clean.

Your example will require more maintenance and charging infrastructure. Normally cars sit during the day. In your ride sharing example vehicles will be on the rode throughout the day moving from taking you to work, maybe your wife in a different direction, kids to school, grandmother to the grocery, etc. So an individual car per owner might have 50 miles a day on it while this shared car could have hundreds per day.

Yeah. And think how much more mileage that will put on those cars, even more miles than if everyone had their own individual car, because the car must drive itself from one user to the next.

More cars clogging the roads and wearing out your car faster. Where’s the benefit?

This whole idea seems like a delusion to me. People have convinced themselves that ride-sharing plus autonomous cars will somehow suspend reality and suspend how basic economics work. Kinda like how Shai Agassi convinced himself and the investors in (Project) Better Place that a battery swapping subscription service could work, despite the obviously unworkable business model. Obvious to me, and I’ve never run a business!

“If you buy a $100,000 tesla and devide the payment 10 ways and lower fuel cost significantly for all cars you are paying much less than 10 super cheap cars.”

If the car is being used by 10x as many people, then it’s getting worn out 10x as fast. How does it benefit anyone if you have to buy a new car 10x as often?

And in the meantime, you often will have to wait around because all of the cars in the pool are in use… which of course is exactly the problem of depending on taxi service. It’s not instantly ready to take you anywhere at your convenience, which is the primary benefit of owning your own car.

I have been persuaded that this ride-sharing service will work for some people. I used to make the analogy with people renting out their own bedrooms on Airbnb, which I thought was a rare thing; but as has been pointed out to me, Airbnb now does more business than any one of the busiest hotel chains.

So, no doubt it will work for some. But I’m very skeptical that it’s going to work for the average car owner. Nor am I convinced that a car can actually “make money” for the average person that way. In addition to wearing out the car faster, commercial use of that sort would require more expensive insurance, and might run the risk of leaving you legally exposed in the case where someone using the car had an accident, or tried to use it as the getaway car for a crime.

When you include the hassle of having to deal with getting the car serviced more frequently, not to mention cleaned on a regular basis, plus the hassle of never being sure that it will be returned to you when you need to use it… is it really going to be worth it?

Some people will say “Yes”. But I think most will rather firmly say “No”.

“You, your parents, brothers, sisters, children all have their own cars maybe 10 or more in total but only drive them 20 minutes a day each”

If I bought that logic, i’d rent my apartment for only the 12-8 hours I actually use it, then I would rent my bed by the hour since I don’t always sleep in it. I’d rent space in my fridge since I don’t use all of that, I’d rent out a space in my driveway, rent time on my pool since I use that perhaps once a week and only when it is hot. Etc. etc.

And my life would be a Soviet hell of zero privacy and continually begging to use my own stuff.

No thanks, fat and happy capitalist here. I own lots of stuff, you can’t touch it, and I don’t give a time shared rat’s behind if your socialist mind cannot wrap around that.

“So if someone pukes in your interior, not only are you stuck with that, but you also get to see them do it!”

That was exactly my reaction, too. Having an interior camera won’t “discourage” anyone from puking in your car, as this article absurdly claims! It will merely allow you do watch it on video. How nice… NOT!

“I don’t want the inside of my car to look and feel like a cab” totally agree. I have a $100,000 airplane, but I have declined to put it out for rental even though I can make $150 an hour for doing that. No way I want others touching my stuff, any more than renting my wife out.

Makes far more sense to have a fleet of beaters that get used for a year or so then sold, just like car rental agencies do now.

Your right and wrong. Yes its kinda just a beta month one and two. Ramp up is 30 cars first month 100 next month. But by christmas it is supposed to be 2000 deliveries per month. So we should see real customer deliveries by novemember.

So you can remotely unlock the doors from anywhere in the world, but can you precondition the car? For example, if I wanted to turn the heater on to defrost the windows, will it use 4G to allow me to do this from anywhere? Is there a price to pay for the 4G service?

And – if you leave your ‘Key Card’ at home because your phone is always with you, and your phone dies at work, I hope they have a work around for that, too! (Mine has died, while at work, so that is a real possibility!)

Why would you leave the key card at home if your concern is your phone dying?
I would argue the key card is a much better form factor than a traditional fob since you can put it in your wallet or wherever you carry your license and leave it there.
Assuming you need to use it, you shouldn’t even have to take it out of your wallet. It uses the same tech a lot of businesses use for entry including every place I’ve ever worked, and I just leave my access card in my wallet and swipe my wallet, never had a single issue getting into a building.
I’m looking forward to not having a fob on my keys, and I may not be carrying keys at all once I get my Model 3 since we have electronic locks on our doors at home.

“When reviewers discovered that Tesla has replaced the key fob with an NFC key card, some were disappointed – swiping the key card against the B-pillar seems less convenient than simply having the fob in your pocket. Is this a step backward? Nope – according to the sage Alketi, it’s “a red herring.” The key card is only an alternative form of entry – the usual way to enter Model 3 will be by using a smart phone. ”

Both of which are poor solutions to an already solved problem. Bluetooth devices have trouble staying connected. I have gotten rid of my bluetooth keyboard, mouse and headphones because of connection issues. And swiping a card is a step backwards.

I will not be loaning our Model 3 out… I want reliable keyless entry. This is easily the worst ‘feature’ of the car and I am hoping Tesla or a third party provides an optional fob by the time we buy ours.

I have to say I would prefer to have keyless entry like my Volt. As long as the fob is in my pocket I can just grab the handle and push the little button with my thumb and the door opens.

After getting used to this it is really irritating when I drive our i3, which uses an old fashioned unlock button directly on the key fob, and I am carrying stuff in one hand and realize that I have to reach over and try to grab the key out of the pocket that inevitably is always on the other side of whichever hand is free.

Almost always even if my hands are free I grab the handle before I remember that I need the fob to unlock. First world problems I guess.

If they want to sell the Model 3 also as a taxi like they now do with the Model S in Schiphol, that’s fine, but don’t make people pay for build in taxi features when they are rather looking for personal cars features, especially if those taxi features have the potential of infringing on privacy or imply higher risk of hacking. Just make two versions, one optimized for personal use and another for taxi use.

Of course, Tesla can impose whatever for now, since they are as much as alone in proposing a long range ev with a supercharging network, but it would not make people feel as ease and above all provide other manufacturers the opportunity for strict personal electric cars when they finally do so.

In other words imposing taxi features above personal cars may be empowering future competition in pure personal cars.

They arent making people pay for taxi features. You dont own tesla software tesla does and what they do with there software is their right to do. If you never use ride sharing you arent charged a fee. If you are profiting from their ride sharing software you pay a fee.

Honestly sounds like you just have a stick up your ass.

Do you say: i dont use am radio how dare the tradition automakers include a funtion i dont personally use and spend their money on this. Or what about built in gps what assholes thought that up many people have their own gps and its built into every modern phone how dare they invest in something you dont lersonally need or want?

Get real they arent making cars for you they are making cars for the public. They also spend money on solar tech bet that pisses you off.

I’m sorry, are you seriously suggesting that Tesla gives you all those sensors, computers, and the software for free?

Hahahahahahaha, oh that’s a good one. One way or another they are forcing people to pay for it. They are not forcing them to pay for the full cost of it but thinking you aren’t paying for at least some of it is naive at best.

A 9000$ price for a 4000$ worth 25 KWh battery extension to pay for unwanted and imposed taxi stuff could indeed be seen as a big stick in the ass like you elegantly state. But the additional privacy infringement of cameras in the cabin along with extra hacking risk make it worse. It is like making a beautiful cake and then putting ketchup on it. If there is another cake available it doesn’t matter, but if it is the sole and only one, you are going to be a little pissed off like you state so elegantly again.

Beside I don’t see why you consider drivers so badly or why you don’t seem to accept there could be two Model 3 types.

There are good economies of scale that Tesla is taking advantage of. By putting all these features in each car, they get to buy the electronics, sensors etc. at the lowest possible price and by installing them in each car means they don’t have to have multiple assembly processes based on options chosen. If most people would order these options anyway, then little is saved by making some different.

All this talk about the Tesla network when they don’t even have a car that can truly drive itself and likely won’t for many years to come. Until we can safely and legally sit in the back seat and let the car drive us anywhere we want to go I just don’t see it happening.

Well of course there are more “critical details” to be released. We don’t even know what the kWh capacity of the two battery pack sizes are! And we have yet to see the official EPA window stickers.

“Tesla has said that all vehicles built since October 2016 have the hardware necessary for full self-driving capability.”

Yeah, that’s Tesla’s story, and they’re sticking to it. Meanwhile, in the real world, it has been reported on the Tesla Motors Club forum that Tesla is now putting Autopilot Hardware 2.5 into production cars, and HW 3.0 is in development.